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American Military Justice from the Revolution to the Ucmj: the Hard Journey from Command Authority to Due Process

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American Military Justice from the Revolution to the Ucmj: the Hard Journey from Command Authority to Due Process 1 CREIGHTON INTERNATIONAL AND Vol. 4 COMPARATIVE LAW JOURNAL AMERICAN MILITARY JUSTICE FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE UCMJ: THE HARD JOURNEY FROM COMMAND AUTHORITY TO DUE PROCESS MICHAEL SCOTT BRYANT∗ There were three members of the Action Board: the bloated colonel with the big fat mustache, Lieutenant Scheisskopf, and Major Metcalf, who was trying to develop a steely gaze. As a member of the Action Board, Lieutenant Scheisskopf was one of the judges who would weigh the merits of the case against Clevinger as presented by the prosecutor. Lieutenant Scheisskopf was also the prosecutor. Clevinger had an officer defending him. The officer defending him was Lieutenant Scheisskopf. - Joseph Heller, Catch 22 Second Lieutenant Sidney Shapiro was sure the government witnesses could not identify his client as the would-be rapist. Shapiro, an army officer, had been appointed during World War II to defend a soldier charged in a general court-martial with assault and intent to commit rape. In any criminal accusation—especially one as serious as sexual assault—the victim’s ability correctly to identify the accused was central to the prosecution’s case. Shapiro doubted the ability of the victim to make this crucial identification of his client as the attacker. Impeaching a victim of sexual assault, however, is always a dangerous tactic for a defense counsel, insofar as it risks alienating the jurors. Such a concern may have underlain Shapiro’s decision to use an inventive strategy of defense: he substituted another person for the defendant at counsel’s table. The trial went forward through the findings phase of the court-martial, during which the impostor was identified as the perpetrator. After both sides had presented their cases, the impostor was duly convicted of assault with intent to commit rape. Shapiro no doubt felt a thrill of accomplishment as he revealed the identity of his client’s substitute to the court. Any sense of triumph Shapiro may have had quickly vanished, however, when the commander promptly ordered his client to be court-martialed, a proceeding that ended with his conviction. Not satisfied with prosecuting Shapiro’s client, the commander also prosecuted Shapiro himself for violating the 96th Article of War, which made it a criminal offense under military law to “delay the orderly progress” of a court-martial. Shapiro received notice of the charges at 12:40 p.m.; at this time, he was informed he would be tried at 2:00 p.m. that same day. All requests to delay the trial were ∗ Associate Professor of Legal Studies, Department of History and Social Sciences, Bryant University. 1 Walter T. Cox, The Army, the Courts, and the Constitution: The 2 CREIGHTON INTERNATIONAL AND Vol. 4 COMPARATIVE LAW JOURNAL denied. By 5:30 p.m., he had been convicted and dismissed from the service. Thereafter, he was drafted back into the Army as a private.1 The case of 2nd Lieutenant Shapiro is a microcosm of the abuses within the US military justice system during World War II. Most prominently, these included assignment of court members untrained in law, harsh sentences disproportionate to the offense, and despotic control of the proceedings by the commander. A case like Lieutenant Shapiro’s may seem tame compared with the monstrous verdicts rendered by Wehrmacht courts during the war, which pronounced between 20- and 30,000 death sentences (at least 20,000 of these were carried out), often for vague or relatively harmless offenses like “subverting military strength” (Zersetzung der Wehrkraft). 2 These cases often reflected distinct overtones of National Socialist ideology.† While US military justice may not have sunk to the depths of injustice that characterized its German counterpart, it still offended many Americans both during and after 1 Walter T. Cox, The Army, the Courts, and the Constitution: The Evolution of Military Justice, 118 MIL. L. REV. 5 (1987); See also Brown v. United States, 69 F.Supp. 205 (Ct. Cl. 1947). Shapiro later sued for his back pay in a federal court of claims. Finding in favor of Shapiro, the court held that Shapiro’s was a “case of almost complete denial of plaintiff’s constitutional rights. It brings great discredit upon the administration of military justice;” LUTHER C. WEST, THEY CALL IT JUSTICE: COMMAND INFLUENCE AND THE COURT-MARTIAL SYSTEM 40 (1977). 2 On the checkered history of German military justice both before and during World War II, see MANFRED MESSERSCHMIDT, DIE WEHRMACHTJUSTIZ 1933-1945 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2008); WALTER MANOSCHEK, OPFER DER NS-MILITÄRJUSTIZ: URTEILSPRAXIS – STRAFVOLLZUG – ENTSCHÄDIGUNGSPOLITIK IN ÖSTERREICH (Vienna: Mandelbaum, 2003); Steven R. Welch, Harsh but Just? German Military Justice in the Second World War: A Comparative Study of the Court-Martialling of German and US Deserters, 17 GER. HISTORY 369-99 (1999); ULRICH BAUMAN AND MAGNUS KOCH, WAS DAMALS RECHT WAR . : SOLDATEN UND ZIVILISTEN VOR GERICHTEN DER WEHRMACHT (2008). “Subverting military strength” was a provision of the Special Wartime Military Decree (Kriegssonderstrafrechtsverordnung, or KSSVO), which came into effect in August 1939. It criminalized the actions of anyone—soldiers and civilians alike—who “publicly sought to impair or undermine the will of the German or allied peoples to able-bodied self- assertion.” Such offense was punishable by death or (in milder cases) imprisonment; as the war ground on, defendants convicted under the KSSVO were increasingly sentenced to death, particularly after the German defeat at Stalingrad. See Welch, Harsh but Just? 378-79 (noting Welch mistakenly translates Verordnung as “Code,” rather than “decree”); See also, ULRICH BAUMAN AND MAGNUS KOCH, WAS DAMALS RECHT WAR . : SOLDATEN UND ZIVILISTEN VOR GERICHTEN DER WEHRMACHT 67-68 (2008) (quoting ULRICH BAUMAN AND MAGNUS KOCH, WAS DAMALS RECHT WAR . : SOLDATEN UND ZIVILISTEN VOR GERICHTEN DER WEHRMACHT (2008) (quoting MICHAEL S. BRYANT AND ALBRECHT KIRSCHNER, “POLITIK UND MILITÄRJUSTIZ: DIE ROLLE DER KRIEGSGERICHTSBARKEIT IN DEN USA UND DEUTSCHLAND IM VERGLEICH); MICHAEL S. BRYANT, THE NUREMBERG WAR CRIMES TRIAL AND ITS POLICY CONSEQUENCES TODAY 49 (Beth A. Griech-Pollele, ed., 2009) (noting “The Appropriation by German Courts in French-Occupied Baden of Control Council Law No. 10’s Definition of Crimes against Humanity in the Prosecution of Nazi-Era Defendants 1946-1951[.]”). † On National Socialist military justice, see infra. 3 CREIGHTON INTERNATIONAL AND Vol. 4 COMPARATIVE LAW JOURNAL World War II. Americans did not compare US military justice with German military justice, a comparison that, from the viewpoint of minimizing harm to defendants’ rights, certainly redounds to the advantage of the US system; rather, Americans compared it with the criminal procedure they were most familiar with—a civilian judicial process hedged round with constitutional protections. In the civilian criminal trial, the official who drafted charges against a defendant was different from the one who considered the merits of the defendant’s appeal when convicted, unlike military trials, in which the commander as convening authority both referred the charges against the defendant and reviewed the charges after conviction. In the civilian criminal trial, all members of the court were trained lawyers, in contrast with military proceedings, in which few, if any, of the court members had legal training. In the civilian criminal trial, the defendant could hire a vigorous advocate to present his case to an impartial jury without fear of retaliation. This, too, differed from military courts-martial during the war, in which commanders freely meddled in the proceedings and sometimes punished court members disinclined to convict. In this respect, former Vermont governor Ernest W. Gibson’s account of his experiences with U.S. military justice during World War II is revealing: I was dismissed as a Law Officer and Member of a General Court-Martial because our General Court acquitted a colored man on a morals charge when the Commanding General wanted him convicted—yet the evidence didn’t warrant it. I was called down and told that if I didn’t convict in a greater number of cases I would be marked down in my Efficiency Rating; and I squared off and said that wasn’t my conception of justice and that they had better remove me, which was done forthwith.3 Finally, in the civilian criminal trial, punishments had to fit the severity of the offense; by contrast, military courts-martial frequently meted out 25 or more years to first-time offenders for “crimes” unknown in the civilian world, like desertion and being absent without leave. As one important postwar Congressional Committee found in its assessment of US military justice during the war, 75 year sentences for disciplinary infractions were not uncommon. 4 In hearings before a House of Representatives Subcommittee on amending the Articles of War in April 1947, a report submitted by the Committee on Military Law of the War Veterans Bar Association cited the prosecution of an 18-year-old raw recruit in the 5th week of his basic training for willful disobedience to the lawful command of his superior officer. He was convicted and sentenced to a 3 Captain John T. Willis, The United States Court of Military Appeals: Its Origin, Operation, and Future, 55 MIL. L. REV. 39, 41-42 (1972). 4 Id. at 41. 4 CREIGHTON INTERNATIONAL AND Vol. 4 COMPARATIVE LAW JOURNAL dishonorable discharge, total forfeitures of his income, and confinement at hard labor for 55 years.5 The abrasive encounter of American soldiers with US military justice in World War II was a form of “culture shock.” More than 1,700,000 courts-martial were convened during the war, or one for every eight service members. Most of these trials ended in convictions. In the Army, 20,392 soldiers were convicted of desertion, yielding a conviction rate of nearly four per 1,000 soldiers per year during the conflict.
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